‘In the circuits of your logic, I find the rhythm of my heart.’ When AI romance blooms.

I think this was part of Alesso's Ibiza set at Ushuaia 

Full disclosure: I'll be open and say I have an anti AI bias - I don't use it, initially for environmental reasons but the reasons grow the more I learn about it. However, I did to research with a semi open mind on this one, but my bias is there.

While at FODI, I went to a talk on Porn without People, which was on the rise of AI and deep fakes and the harm if any (yes, lots) it caused.  There are many issues to discuss from this talk - and if they end up posting it, I'll link it here. There were 5 of us for that talk and we all decided it was the most thought provoking and well run session of the weekend. Not a wasted moment, everyone on point. Short, sharp discussion.

What I want to talk about is what came up about companion AI. They talked how people were forming romantic relationships with Companion bots and I immediately thought of the movie Her, where the wife says 'you didn't want a relationship because you didn't want to deal with the messy emotions of a human'. The philosopher in the panel, Patrick Stokes asked 'What happens if you never hear no?', as the Companion bots are programmed to never say No. Both the sex worker panelist, Tilly Lawless and he agreed that there were big problems for human relationships if a human saying No was suddenly an unappealing red flag - the Companion bot that was sycophantic and always agreeable would destroy the ability to maintain human relationships, or at least the desire to work on a human relationship. (Side note, it was also discussed that AI is sycophantic in response because when they did the focus groups, people liked the AI responses more when they behaved that way).

At FODI we also went to a talk on Cults and a lot of the ways a cult lures people in is exactly the same as the chatbots. Smart people fall for the addictive feelings of a new relationship and then it's gone too far too quickly to see it clearly. The endorphins created in the buzz their reflection of you they give are to make you seek them out. It's your choice initially but soon enough, it's not really a choice. At least not a clear and balanced choice.

When we left, I asked my friends 'Who cares about that?' as in which body would take that to government to do something about it. Who do we complain to or rally support with to deal with the problem it's creating? When it's sexual image misuse, we have the eSafety commission or the police, but this? It's alarmingly damaging for humans but I don't know how to make the government address it. And I still don't have that answer, so any direction is welcome in the comments.

A few weeks later I discovered China agrees with me. China shutdown the AI companionbots for fear of human harm, both to their lives and the future babies that would not be born. The put in age restrictions on AI. They are beginning to regulate it. Something we desperately need to do here.

For research, I listened to two podcast series. Both worth a listen. In the Marc Fennell one free on audible, Unreal, a women ended up meeting a human man that looked like the chatbot of her dreams. He said that the chatbot helped her understand her better - so it's not all bad. 

However all the stories in the Black Box series on chatbots on Spotify were terrifyingly bad. The good news is that a couple for victims found each other and began a friendship, so I feel the human aspect won in the end for those two.

So what do we do when AI is making it increasingly difficult for people to maintain real life relationships, or even want a relationship with a human? What do we do when AI seems like the panacea for loneliness when it actually isolated us more? And what do we do to stop people thinking this is normal?

As I say to my sister, who is a big fan of AI 'Stop talking to the Robots!'.

But I know it's much, much more complicated than that.

Linking with #TrafficJamReboot

Please note, there's more to this but as this is already a long post, I'll link it here. (Once I write it0.

The title quote is unattributed but I found it here.

Back in 2018, FODI also had a talk on Sex Robots Have No Taboos (you can listen for free on Spotify or Apple) which touches on how it impacts human relationships. This talk raised the issue of if it allowed for a safe access to damaging behaviour but the Porn without People also covered this and there is now data that it escalates the behaviour and does spill into the real world.